what i found

After researching and doing surveys and interviews I found out a lot of interesting things about some of my peers. A lot of people that I surveyed said they didn't know the actual policy about plagiarism at our school which I found interesting since I would think that teachers would let their students know at the beginning of classes their policy as well as the school's policy on plagiarism.

I also checked out the school website and I couldn't actually find anything that had to do with the school policy on plagiarism. I would think that if the punishment for plagiarism is being kicked out of school or whatever it is the school would at least make it easy to locate the policy on their website or at least have teachers tell students what is and isn't acceptable.

I really was surprised that Notre Dame students spend more time gaining the out of class college experience. I would think that for a private Catholic school most of the students would be there to learn. But there is a football team which I feel has a huge impact on student activities.

Plagiarism and College Culture

Well my experience in college I think has been very different from people at Notre Dame. This year I have been focusing mostly in theatre and trying to make a name for myself there. I have been doing other classes that fill the GE requirement as well but my free time is taken away because of theatre. I spend a lot of nights finishing up homework and projects. My afternoon is spent working in the theatre and taking some classes. On a usual basis I get maybe an average of four hours of sleep every night. Its difficult for me sometimes to keep up with my classes but as long as I get a passing grade my teachers and parents are happy.

Since my major is theatre its hard for me not to want to do that over my other classes. So I have to actually block out time to do other homework and get it all done. This in a way is stressful but I am happy with what I am doing and don't feel too stressed out.

I think Notre Dame students have a different kind of stress. For them it might be also late nights to finish a project or homework but I don't think they are focusing on theatre like me. They may just have a different kind of extracurricular like sports or something. Some of the students there may also not have to worry about the pricing of classes. Either they may come from a rich family or are on a free ride with scholarships. For me I have to pick my classes carefully and know I can pass them otherwise its a waste of money and I have to take it over again.

So I guess there are some similarities between the two but the kind of stress caused by working so much may be different in the kinds of activities as well as how many classes they are taking. I don't know if the students there are taking 18 units their freshman year like me or not. Its something to look up.

Awesomeness= These Books

i really enjoy reading when i have the free time. there's one series that i think is awesome and its by the author kelly armstrong. she writes these series that branch off into different supernatural groups. like one of her book series goes into werewolves and other shape shifters. others have vampires and witches.

what's really cool about these series is they all connect in some way. like a character from her series on witches will come up in the werewolf series or something like that. she has these story lines which all connect and make it seem like there's a huge magic community and all of them are connected in some way and we as readers get to know their stories. this is what i really like about her books.

she has a lot of books but some of the ones i have read are listed below:

Dimestore Magic

Bitten

Broken

Industrial Magic

another author that i enjoy is patricia briggs. she also writes into the supernatural but focuses on just werewolves and a woman named mercy thompson who can shapeshift in to a coyote. i have all of her books and really enjoy them.

Essay 2 ideas

For me I believe that Wikipedia could be an amazing site for finding information, it just needs a better system set-up. Its a great idea to have other people post information, but that leaves so much room for error. people could post whatever they wanted and it would be on the web for however long until Wiki realizes its not correct, or someone else discovers it.

In my opinion I think that if they set up a better monitoring system that worked as a data base and rechecked the information with already pre-existing data from other sources. This would be a way for other people to add information and make sure that only true information is posted.

Or have people who are professionals in the certain field post the information, like some kind of inviting system where Wikipedia asks the people to post the information. Then someone who is educated in the field can post information they know is true.

I don't know, but I believe that there was a better format to the system then Wikipedia would be an amazing resource for papers and information

Inventing the University part 2

So after our class discussion I feel like I have a better understanding of the article. Or at least the parts that our groups discussed. For my group we had to determine the differences between writer-based and reader-based writing and determine what audience awareness is. I'm still a little unsure about what the differences between writer and reader based is but I think it has something to do with thinking about are you writing for your reader or are your writing for you. But as I said I'm not sure.

Audience awareness was the idea of knowing the audience you are presenting your writing to. If you are writing about how you hate football then you probably shouldn't let a football fan read you essay. Or if you are writing about a certain topic that your audience doesn't know a lot about then you should go in to a little more detail in describing it.

Inventing the University

It is true that students write to seem like they are teaching the reader something in order to make themselves seem more knowledgeable about the topic. But to me this seems like it would make the student seem arrogant and full of themselves.

Writing to your audience is a good thing but you don't want to be writing as if you are looking down on them because you know more about the topic then they do. The quote on page five that says :

"Once you have your purpose clearly in mind, your next task is to define and analyze your audience, a sure sense of our audience - knowing who it is and what assumptions you can reasonably make about it - is crucial to the success of your rhetoric."

It makes sense to write to your audience. But it seems like their would be a thin line between telling your reading about something and teaching your reader. Its completely understandable why some students write as if the work they are producing is their own genius. I mean who hasn't written and essay talking about something like the Declaration of the Independence and writing it as if you were there. Not like any of us were there but the information is there to speculate.

I feel like I'm rambling at this point because I don't know what else to react to about this article. If I think of anything else I will post another blog about it

GAHHHHH!

So I feel like I've been super behind of blog stuff but I have had a very stressful weekend and it has not been a fun week for me. I will try to make up the other blogs as well as this weeks assignment.

I am not personally a blogger so I don't usually check out other blogs. I don't know exactly what to do to look in to other blogs but I will surf the web this weekend and try to find some blogs that I like.

I apologize for being late on my blogs, but I will try to keep up with everything and make up some things this weekend.